


The Master-Mistress of My Passion

by amidseraphim, vivitannia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's Family is Rich (Supernatural), Enemies to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Character Death, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Unspecified Terminal Illness, mafia subplot in the background, nyc lovestory, white men winning capitalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:13:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29648352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amidseraphim/pseuds/amidseraphim, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivitannia/pseuds/vivitannia
Summary: Dean Winchester can’t help but think he’s pushing his luck whenever he makes his trips to New York City—to the life he almost had there. When his drinking buddy is arrested and expected to testify against his mafia ties, Dean’s only given more of an excuse to escape his responsibilities back home. Things only get worse when Sam, his freshly-graduated brother, becomes increasingly involved with the snobby lawyers and selfish business men of high society. While the New York hustle and bustle keeps him busy enough, Dean finds himself waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop back home—but not before Castiel Novak can barge into his life with a pair of his own, too-expensive shoes for him to worry about.
Relationships: Balthazar/Gabriel (Supernatural), Castiel & Meg Masters, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	The Master-Mistress of My Passion

UNDER a pair of scrutinizing eyes, Dean Winchester’s ill-fitting J. Crew suit did not hold up to the undoubtedly designer ensembles most everyone else in the courtroom was sporting. Once an almost-black color, the fabric had lightened considerably from years of his tossing it carelessly into the wash, and while they weren’t at all visible from the outside, he could feel numerous frayed threads sprouting out of the stitching, brushing against his wrist when he moved.

(His father had taught him to burn them off as a young boy. Dean could still hazily recall the weight of the box in his hand as he struck the match over the kitchen sink, the heat lapping at his fingers because he wasn’t quite holding it right.)

In the hours before the trial, Dean had walked straight—or as straight as he could manage given his latitude-induced jellied legs and knotted stomach—out of a three-hour flight from Lawrence to an airport bathroom to change. Then, he caught a cab and made it just in time for the show. _Tired,_ he mused to himself, _but having a pattern of not sleeping and then pulling an all-nighter to pack would do that to someone._

The spectator area was chock-full of people young and old, dressed smartly in black and white professional wear and practically reeking of the same high-rise office, contract-signing stench. Dean sat alone in the tense, crowded, New York City courtroom and was reminded of his forgettable experiences spent at the occasional Sunday mass—which is to say that he was bored, barely listening, and most definitely out of place.

United States v. Abaddon Sands, et al was to be _the trial of the decade_ , his friend Crowley had snarked over the phone. Hence, the numerous bigwigs attending; unscrupulous as he was, Crowley had a mostly-clean name for himself outside of organized crime. His arrest and all it had unearthed was a big, national news-breaking story.

Their introduction had come with unfortunate timing, but even if he wasn’t in possession of the greatest moral compass, Crowley had been good to Dean and his younger brother Sam by association. It had been a turbulent, uncertain time for the Winchester men when they’d met, what with Dean taking his biyearly trip to New York and suddenly having to juggle the responsibilities of mothering both his father and younger brother, who was on the other side of the country with too much on his plate for any one person to handle alone. Crowley, then a complete stranger, had listened to Dean’s pissy, guarded, drunken babble at a New York City bar (not unlike the one he’d been arrested at) with just enough tact to relieve him of some of his worries.

_It's freeing, liberating, to tell yourself you’ve no obligation to help others when it starts to feel like too much. Even those closest to you. But there’s a middle ground there between completely giving up your own life for others and turning into a self-serving prick you don’t recognize._

In retrospect, Crowley must have consumed just as much, if not more alcohol than Dean himself to be offering unsolicited and almost unwelcome advice to strangers. After that night, he learned that Crowley was a very coherent drunk—right up until he wasn’t, of course.

The calling of a Fergus MacLeod to the stand made Dean look up from the hole he was burning into the head of a balding man two rows in front of him. _Crowley’s government name_ , he reminded himself.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Crowley turned slowly away from the bailiff and met Dean’s eyes with a small smile, cheating out to the audience in the theatrical sense of the phrase.

“I _solemnly_ and _sincerely_ declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

When the deposition began, Dean caught himself drifting in and out of attention once again, having to stifle a series of audible yawns that threatened to cut through the noise of the ongoing proceedings. It would’ve come as a major shock to the version of him that’d first come to New York City so long ago that he’d be here years later visiting in support of a close friend in a high-profile mafia trial. But he was old enough now to resign himself to the fact that the life he thought he’d live when he was, like, _four_ was never likely to happen just as he’d planned. So while his juvenile fixation on emulating Jimi Hendrix was long dead, it came as both a major inconvenience and a small, somewhat subliminal comfort that his adult life was shaping up to be so interesting in its own way. The whole ordeal was still _really friggin’ weird_ , and Dean would be lying if he said he wasn’t afraid for Crowley despite all of the man’s boastful claims over the phone about how they’d _underestimated him_ and _he’d outsmarted them,_ but at the very least, it wasn’t boring. Personal feelings about the silent moral questions being posed notwithstanding.

Sammy was dismayed with his quiet support for the man, which he supposed wasn’t big enough of a disagreement to cause any lasting tension. The alternative was for Dean’s genius, recent law school grad of a brother (complete with U.S. government-mandated code of ethics) to side with his friend, the crotchety Brit who was provably guilty and getting away with it. The scruples were appreciated, and he hadn’t defended Crowley to his younger brother much anyway. For one, playing mock trial over the phone with him wasn’t going to be any fun. For another, it wasn’t like Crowley was going to be offended by Dean’s lack of an enthusiastic defense.

The two of them had been attempting to clean out a bar together when the arrest happened. They did not, as they’d initially hoped, end the festivities with the biggest hangovers of their respective lives, but instead went out with an almost blackout drunk Dean watching on with a furrowed brow and puzzled expression as his drinking buddy was suddenly handcuffed and whisked away to the back of a cop car in a blurry turn of events. Even in his sorry state, he was able to make out that the cops had said “murder” when Mirandizing him, which was a far cry from the public intoxication charge they’d almost been expecting.

_“Don’t worry about me, Dean,”_ Crowley had slurred. _“You know me… with my grubby hands and cheese-eating ways… positively ratlike…”_

While it was true then that he was ratlike, he was now a _literal_ rat. For the operation he’d given most of his adult years to—the money laundering, the extortion, all of it—he’d been offered the best possible deal imaginable. Total and complete absolution in the eyes of the law if he would stand trial, as he was doing now, and be the prosecution’s star witness.

The air of the courtroom was punctuated by outbursts, objections, and the undeniable sound of Crowley giving the prosecutor some choice words and being met with the threat of being held in contempt. It was “the trial of the decade,” sure, but if anyone could find something like that boring, it was Dean. He couldn’t find it in himself to pay attention, fighting the urge to bounce his leg up and down, to fiddle with his fingernails—anything.

After a good twenty or thirty minutes more, Dean issued a silent, mental apology to Crowley and slumped in his seat slightly, looking down at his own shoes with a pair of heavy eyelids that had begun to obscure his vision more and more with each passing second.

It wasn’t that long after that Dean had quietly nodded off into a light, dreamless sleep. Every so often, he’d open his eyes, look up, catch tidbits of all the spicy court drama, then fall back asleep as quickly as he’d awoken. _Like high school chem all over again_ , he thought in between naps with a half-frown.

Awake, asleep, awake, asleep. The process must’ve continued for hours (or he’d stopped waking up intermittently), because eventually Dean awoke one final time to a lightly murmuring courtroom. Some of the almost-people around him were standing now. Others were slowly filing out. _None of them were asleep_.

Crowley had gone—probably had been for a few minutes—and Dean strangely felt like he’d lost his only friend in the room. It was true, of course, that he was now surrounded only by vaguely-familiar Fox Business guest star faces, but if anyone, it was _Crowley_ who needed the moral support. Not Dean, whose own problems sucked, sure, but thankfully did not directly involve a deep mafia affiliation and having to give sworn testimony against said affiliation. He absentmindedly wondered if he had really needed the moral support from Dean at all, who couldn’t decide if Crowley would view the sight of his nodding off and jolting awake as irksome or endearing. Hoping it was the latter, Dean finally got to his feet.

_Tired. Please be there, Sam._ Dean pushed his way out of the courtroom, his senses immediately barraged by the hustle and bustle of New York’s southern district.

A meandering breeze wafted through the plaza, ruffling his already mussed-up crop of hair. While running his fingers through it, it occurred to him that it was longer now than it’d been in years. Dean had kept it cropped short for a very long time—he had chopped it all off once in the middle of an uncomfortable teenage summer and thought maybe his father would appreciate it being kept to marine regulations; he had _kept_ it short afterward for _himself_. It was practical, it suited him, and it made fewer people stop and call him pretty, of all things. The cut would have to happen before his flight back to Kansas, to where his father and all he entailed were waiting for him. The venue of Dean’s welcome home party was going to be John’s dark, somber room; he was going to be greeted first by the droning of his father’s machine and second by the faint smell of disinfectant and the lingering scent of his dad’s rotten egg breath. Dean would see Ellen and thank her wholeheartedly for taking care of John while he was away. If they were lucky, the man himself might say a thing or two, but then it’d be back to the menial routine of the almost-life Dean had been living for the past eight years.

As much as the New York trip was for checking in on Sam and meeting his girlfriend and for Crowley’s trial and for planning his friends’ wedding, it was mostly for _Dean_. He had a couple weeks’ time to put Kansas behind him and play out his little tourist fantasy.

Dean’s eyes scanned the oncoming traffic for Sam’s ugly convertible, and when he was sure it was nowhere in sight, he plopped himself down on the flight of concrete stairs in a grand gesture. Some people mean mugged him as they walked past. Others simply walked around him as if he were just another discarded receipt or styrofoam cup on the street.

Fighting the urge to stick out his tongue at anyone who glared at him a little too long, Dean studied his calloused, work-worn hands disinterestedly and then his shoes—his _cleanest_ pair of combat boots. He didn’t think he needed the visual confirmation, but his vantage point from the ground affirmed his prediction that none of the people walking past were wearing anything outside of pretentiously shiny dress shoes and businesslike heels more than two inches tall. Dean couldn’t help but feel that he was easily clockable in this corner of New York—a _hick_ , by their standards, an outsider in the truest sense of the word. The suit he was wearing, while it wasn’t exactly Prada, would work for the day; if he stayed quiet and still, he wouldn’t be singled out, and if he didn’t, his mannerisms, dialect, and his colloquialisms were all easy enough tells.

Some of his closest friends had done it. It probably hadn’t happened right away, but they now fit seamlessly into the patchwork of busy city life. His younger brother had too, from everything Dean knew about how things were going since his passing the New York bar exam and becoming a junior associate at his fancy, big-shot law firm. Dean was resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to get any real opportunity for a life in the city.

Like every time before, he’d get comfortable. Then he’d run out of time.

He’d been to New York before, years before he had ever met Crowley. He’d tried to spend a gap year after high school there with his best friend Charlie. They had just carved out their own little place in the city, their own little found family, when he left—when Sam and John needed him.

In the years following, New York became his go-to vacation destination. He used his escapades there to get away from his sad, dismal life in Kansas. _Kansas_ was where he worked multiple jobs back-to-back and would use what little free time he theoretically had to himself to change his ailing father’s diapers.

It was very easy for Dean to feel like his life had passed him by when everyone he grew up with had done so much with the years he had lost. Hell, Sam was so smitten that he was probably planning on asking his girlfriend of a year to marry him soon. Dean hadn’t had a serious relationship since his early twenties.

With his younger brother on the brain, Dean looked up to check for his car again and was met with the light sting of disappointment for a second time. Was the traffic really so bad in this area of NYC? Or was it just the sight of the ugly convertible that caused rubbernecking and traffic jams? He quickly decided that he _definitely_ preferred the latter theory, letting out a huff of laughter under his breath at the image.

Suddenly, he spotted the glaring green of a convertible approaching, the very thought of being caught riding in the thing making him grimace. In spite of the frankly hideous car he was driving, Dean visibly perked up at the thought of seeing Sammy again. His doubts and worries would all die down once he could confirm with his own eyes that he really was alright.

The last time they’d seen each other, Sam’s eyes had been dark and empty, his skin as gaunt and white as hospital walls, his lips a pale shade of murky blue; his body’s silhouette had shrunk down to what was just shy of being a brittle-boned skeleton. Dean had been _so certain_ that the next time he saw him in person, it’d be in an open casket.

The past several years had been rough on the Winchester men. With Sam, things were looking up, but the exact opposite could be said for John. Dean wasn’t going to let anything slip during their reunion, though. Sam didn’t care about their dad, and he _didn’t have to care_ about their dad. John was wholly Dean’s responsibility and Sam had long since left Kansas and John in the dust.

Things were fine the way they were.

The car pulled up and parked in an open parking space in front of the courthouse, and Dean was subsequently forced to watch Sam’s dreadful parking technique. Who knew that city life in NYC would override the countless lessons Dean had given him when they were teenagers? All those long hours spent just for him to move away and perform _that_ crappy parking job? It was a travesty, really.

“Dean!”

Sam’s ever-familiar voice snapped Dean’s string of thoughts to an indefinite end, his giraffe-like brother running over to him with arms outstretched. Dean gave his brother a gummy smile as he approached, memories of their long, hard childhoods flashing through his mind’s eye. It had all been worth it for this.

Dean stood up quickly, and before he could even move to pat his suit pants down, Sam’s arms wrapped around him, tight as a bowstring. Dean could just barely keep his balance, not that it mattered much, since Sam was almost lifting him off the ground. They laughed together and any of the tension and the far-away arguments they’d shared as kids melted to nothing. Dean squeezed him tightly. _Sam’s alive._

For the first time in several years, Dean’s mind was at peace. It wasn’t racing with thoughts concerning Sam nor with any of the other things that had been piled onto his plate. It was as still and silent and serene as a lake at night. He had his physical confirmation that his younger brother was okay (since the countless texts and phone calls hadn’t been _nearly_ enough to console him) and suddenly the drab courthouse setting had a little more color.

“Sammy, you... kinda stranglin’ m’here,” Dean wheezed out, barely comprehensible.

“Oh!” Sam laughed, the action reverberating through Dean’s entire body in a warm ripple. When Sam finally let go, Dean was practically on the verge of collapsing onto the ground and kissing it gently. “Sorry, Dean,” he said, ear to ear and all, his eyes just as stupidly characteristic of a puppy’s as ever.

Dean was making a visible effort to catch his breath when someone behind Sam cleared their throat. They had to be much smaller than Sam was, seeing as how his gargantuan figure had made it so Dean hadn’t even realized anyone was there. Sam let out a surprised noise and whirled around, his clumsy movements reminiscent of a baby deer. “Castiel, I completely forgot!”

Dean cocked an eyebrow. So _this_ person had to be why Sam hadn’t immediately ambushed him with the expected barrage of rapid-fire inquiries as soon as he’d stopped hugging him. What on God’s green earth was the name _Castiel?_ It was either a rich person’s attempt at creativity or some kind of extremely traditional, hyper-religious Amish thing, he thought—but considering this was New York, that was unlikely. Dean’s mind raced at a mile a minute with what little he had, and Sam finally moved to the right, revealing the elusive stranger.

He was only just shorter than Dean. Castiel had black hair that was styled in a manner that made him look like he’d just had sex ( _sex hair!_ )... that, or he’d literally had sex beforehand. Despite his ill-fitting, tan trench coat, the suit beneath and the shoes he wore told Dean that this man had enough money to buy the entire city of Lawrence at the very least. And _clearing his throat_ to get Sam’s attention? _Pretentious as hell,_ he grumbled inwardly.

“Dean, this is Castiel Novak, a friend of mine. Castiel, this is Dean Winchester, my brother.”

Castiel squinted at him and then nodded. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dean. Your brother has warned me of your… supposed brashness.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Dean grumbled and glanced at his brother, who was grinning sheepishly to his right. Sam shook his head and placed his hand on Dean’s shoulder. Knowing what Sam meant all too well, his jaw tensed coldly.

“Don’t worry about it.” Before Dean could snap at Sam, the younger Winchester continued: “ _Look,_ Dean, Castiel’s only here because his car broke down and I have to drop him off. So _behave_.” Sam gave Dean another charged, puppy-dog-esque look and Dean rolled his eyes in silent reply. It didn’t take a detective to realize that Sam wanted to stay on Castiel’s good side and was convinced Dean could mess things up if he kept running his mouth. In his periphery, the man stood stick-straight, watching on with an unreadably blank expression. It was almost like he was soulless.

“I’m older than you, Sam. Watch yourself,” Dean scoffed, finally patting his suit down; it was about time he got the chance to. Seemingly deciding that he’d given enough of a warning, Sam looked away and the three of them approached his car in silence, its shape and glaring lime green color making Dean’s stomach churn as they approached.

“How did you even afford this monstrosity? No, why did you even get one?” he asked whilst examining its exterior. It only got uglier the longer he looked at it.

“It’s _Eileen’s_ , not mine, and it’s not a monstrosity, Dean,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. A snide comment on how his girlfriend _couldn’t be that great if her taste in cars sucked this bad_ was on the tip of Dean’s tongue, but to spare himself the inevitable assbeating and verbal abuse from Sam that’d follow, he swallowed it. He'd texted with her on the phone a few times and she had seemed kind and smart, even if her choice of car made Dean doubt that assumption. Maybe she was one of the rare ones—a unicorn with shit taste in cars who was only redeemable due to an overwhelming amount of other good qualities.

“Shotgun!” Castiel said out of the blue, catching both brothers off guard. _What the fuck?_ Dean’s eyes widened incredulously, slowly taking in just how ridiculous the man was being. _The asshole’s doing air quotes._

“Jesus Christ, why hasn’t anyone put a bell on you?” Dean snapped, voice gravelly and exasperated. He was running on empty and Castiel making his heart rate spike was not helping with any of it—it certainly wasn’t doing anything for his bleary eyes and aching shoulders.

Castiel tilted his head, his forehead furrowing ever-so slightly. “I am not a cat, Dean.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that Dean felt that he could only stoop to a glower in reply. This guy was unbearable. It was like he had lived in a cave for the first twenty years of his life.

Sam’s face was panicked as he looked on between the two, already at his wits’ end before they’d even put their seatbelts on. The expression struck Dean as telling. He was almost certainly regretting picking him up after having offered Castiel a ride. “Dean, sit in the backseat, first come first serve. You know how it is.”

He did not, in fact, _know how it was_. When Dean had played chauffeur to his brother as kids, he’d never, _ever_ let anyone ride shotgun but Sam. It struck him as strange that he wasn’t extending the same courtesy. He added the jarring experience to his growing list of reasons to loathe Castiel’s presence.

“What the hell, man? I’m your brother,” Dean mumbled, but thankfully for everyone involved, he clambered into the back seat of the car with a minimal amount of bickering. He hoped Sam appreciated how little of a fight he was putting up. Still weary from the hectic twenty-four hours he’d had, Dean found himself looking on at Sam and Castiel’s interaction on the other side of the slightly tinted car windows with disinterest. Sam was laughing at something Castiel said. _At, not with_ , Dean thought scathingly, as made evident by Castiel’s lack of expression. It struck him as absurd that a human being could be so robot-like. Either he had mastered the art of the poker face somewhere along the line, or some twenty-something years ago there’d been a mini version of the man running around with all of the same mannerisms—complete with oversized trench coat, probably.

The silence that ensued once the ride began was best described as mildly uncomfortable. Sam’s eyes were focused on the road in front of him, _too_ focused considering they were stuck in traffic. Castiel’s eyes were trained on the road ahead as well, but unlike Sam, who was glancing around and shifting in his seat, he was completely still apart from the rise and fall of his chest… given that he was human. If he wasn’t, then who knew? _Fuckin’ creepy,_

“So… Castiel, you a lawyer too?”

Castiel didn’t move an inch when he replied. “No, Sam works at Shurley & Novak LLP. I work at Seraphim,” he explained. “We met when he was an intern a couple years back. I have a personal connection with the partners and come by sometimes. That’s how we became reacquainted.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Castiel’s uncle owns Seraphim and his cousins run the law firm,” Sam explained casually. Dean raised his eyebrow. So his educated guess that Castiel was obscenely wealthy was correct after all. Seraphim was one of the biggest companies in the U.S. and that was about the extent of Dean’s knowledge of it. He would have to ask Sam later in private if he could be bothered to remember.

“Wait, so what exactly do you do, Cas?” Dean asked.

“It’s Castiel.”

“What?”

“My name. I don’t appreciate being called by pet names or nicknames.”

Dean’s eye twitched at that. How foolish of him was it to think he could make friendly conversation with this guy? “Okay, Cas _tiel_ ,” he enunciated, annoyance dripping from his voice. “What exactly is it that you do?”

“Thank you,” Castiel said. “I’m the chief financial officer of Seraphim. It means that I—“

“I know what it means!” Dean snapped. Though it was just as likely true that he was proud of his job or trying to carry the conversation, he hated the feeling of being talked down to. He’d never been to college—it hadn’t been in the cards—but he wasn’t an _idiot_ . He and everyone who knew him could attest to that, couldn’t they? As boring as he found the intricacies of the corporate world from a distance, he _did_ know what a CFO was.

“My apologies. I didn’t intend to make you feel intellectually challenged.”

_Oh_. Well _that_ had made it sound exponentially worse than it was. It occurred to Dean in a flash of annoyance that perhaps Castiel was totally incapable of any kind of grace or tact. Sam snorted somewhere miles away from wherever Dean was.

“You must be _so_ happy with your job,” Dean drawled, voice sarcasm-laden once again—though he doubted Castiel would pick up on it or even understand the concept of sarcasm.

“It's quite a tedious job actually; I wouldn’t call my feelings regarding it happy.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You make fucking bank sitting and staring at the computer screen. What? Are you not nerdy enough for numbers?”

Castiel opened his mouth to reply but not before Sam could stop him by briskly changing the topic. Dean could see the sweat forming on his brother’s forehead and thought bitterly, _not so funny anymore, huh?_

“Dean, how was the flight?” Sam had his typical bitchface and his typical bitchface voice going on. Sighing, Dean realized that Sam was going to play referee between them the entire car ride if he didn’t start making a considerable effort to play nice.

“It was fine. I was drugged up the entire time. I took the pills the doctor gave me.”

“You have a fear of flying?” Castiel asked, voice contemplative.

“What’s it to you?” Dean practically growled. He saw Sam shake his head, but he was finding it hard to care considering that even if Castiel hadn’t meant to be a patronizing dick, he still managed to sound like one every time he so much as opened his mouth.

“It was just a question, Dean.”

Sam started laughing out of the blue, his nervous titter sounding borderline manic. Castiel tilted his head for the second time that day and Dean could only silently massage his temples in an attempt to relieve the tension building in his head. “Don’t mind Dean too much, Castiel. He’s still a bit antsy from the flight and the trial, _right, Dean_?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean reluctantly murmured, suddenly too tired to care and not in overdrive enough to flip.

Sam sighed in what could only be interpreted as relief. “Castiel, do you have any siblings?” he asked. _His second attempt at changing the topic._

“No, I do not. But I did live with my cousins growing up.”

“Oh! I think—“

Dean interrupted Sam with a comment that he instantly regretted. “Aww, were your parents too busy making money to take care of you?”

“Dean!” Sam shouted. Dean had the good grace to look down at his feet, stomach churning like he’d just been chastised by a schoolteacher.

Dean didn’t know what to make of the fact that Castiel was taking twice the time to reply. Throughout the length of their conversation, Castiel had always been quick and efficient with his answers. Too efficient, maybe, but the snappy answers were something of a credit to him, even if he had yet to like what they contained. Castiel’s voice was almost indifferent when he finally spoke, declaring: “No. My parents passed away when I was seven.”

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck._ What a serious escalation it was to go from bickering about knowing what a CFO was to speaking ill of a man’s dead parents! Dean swallowed the lump forming in his throat and retreated in on himself; Sam hadn’t even _attempted_ to salvage the conversation, his eyes shifting back to the road, pretending it needed his utmost attention despite the fact that the convertible hadn’t even moved so much as a foot in the past ten minutes.

The tense silence was broken by a temporary spell: Castiel’s laughter. It struck Dean as odd that someone who came off as so unemotional and stoic as he could have such a beautiful laugh, but he _did_ —it was music to his ears, an angel choir’s sing-song euphony from on high.

The man took a few seconds to recollect himself. “It was a joke,” he deadpanned.

_A joke. Just a joke._

The brothers sighed in relief simultaneously. Dean was so relieved he couldn’t even find it within him to berate Castiel for saying something so universally insensitive. 

The fragile moment was ruined when Sam piped up tentatively. “So, your parents! How are they?”

“Oh. Well, they actually did die when I was seven.”

“What?” Dean spluttered.

“I wanted to lighten the mood after I seemed to have killed it. I realize I was rather unsuccessful.”

Dean mumbled a quiet “sorry” and the chattering came to an indefinite halt. The air was thick with the gravity of the conversation for what felt like eons afterward, but the lack of bickering and things on his mind quickly lulled Dean to sleep anyway. The energy he’d consumed in his verbal scrap with Castiel and his brother had been _so_ much worse than what he’d spent during the drugged-up flight and the tense trial.

When Dean opened his eyes, they were still on the road. “Huh? What?” He looked around wildly and was met with the sight of Castiel looking back at him from the passenger seat ( _Dean’s_ seat) with a gentle smile playing on his lips. It was too familiar—as if it hadn’t meant a thing to him that Dean had only recently mocked his dead parents in their graves.

“Welcome back,” Castiel said, “we’re almost there.”

“Morning, sunshine.” Sam snorted, his eyes still on the road.

Dean groaned softly and rubbed his face, looking out the window in an attempt to reorient himself in reality.

“The fuck you looking at?” Dean snapped when he saw Castiel still watching him. There was something behind the look that made Dean feel uneasy. Like he was being observed by a hawk.

The façade cracked. He saw the other man wince and break eye contact, turning away slightly. “My apologies.”

“Dean,” Sam warned.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Sammy. I won’t ruin anything for you.” 

“Seriously, is that what you think this is about?”

Why did Castiel have to be here? Dean never liked strangers intruding on his personal affairs, especially when things concerned Sam. Castiel wasn’t only a stranger but also someone Dean could only regard as an anti-social freak. “We can talk about this later,” he finally decided with a gruff voice. Somehow he’d expected his trip to New York for his drinking buddy’s deeply moving witness testimony and best friend’s wedding to go much smoother. Day one was already shaping up to exceed his expectations for just how awful things could be.

“I can take a cab,” Castiel suggested, voice too pensive.

“Dude, just shut up!” Dean hissed.

“Castiel—” Sam began.

“What is your _exact_ issue with me, Dean?” Castiel turned fully in his seat, his blue eyes squinting and his lips pursed in something like annoyance. _Finally. He feels._ Castiel inhaled sharply before continuing, “I want to make sure we are on the same page.”

“Dean…” Maybe on another day Dean would’ve heeded his brother’s warning, but the sight of the novel expression on Castiel’s face suddenly made the issue impossible to drop.

“You’re an asshole,” Dean stated firmly.

“ _I’m_ the asshole?” Castiel repeated, sounding incredulous. “How? Dean, if I’m the asshole, you clearly lack self-awareness.”

Dean granted him neither a concession nor a disavowal, opting for stony silence instead. Castiel’s last words hung heavy in the air of the convertible, pervading the space even after he’d been dropped off and for the rest of the brothers’ ride back to Sam’s apartment. Dean was still bristling when it was over and done with, but luckily it wasn’t as though he would ever see Castiel again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates may be irregular for the timebeing. exams are creeping up and the fic has not been written in its entirety yet.
> 
> twt: amidseraphim & vivitannia


End file.
